Teams of highly respected Alzheimer's researchers failed to replicate what appeared to be breakthrough results for the treatment of this brain disease when they were published last year in the journal Science. Those results, presented online Feb. 9, 2012, suggested that the drug bexarotene (marketed as Targretin®) could rapidly reverse the buildup of beta amyloid plaques (Aß) -- a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease -- in the brains of mice. According to the authors of the 2012 report, drug treatment quickly removed most of the plaques and brought rapid reversal of the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits related to the onset of Alzheimer's.